An apparent "PhD" in Bible from the University of Pennsylvania, Dr David Gulad-Glatt, has written a piece in https://www.thetorah.com/article/deuteronomy-the-first-torah
His aim is to demonstrate that the book of Devarim is what is known as the Torah in the later books of the Tanakh, namely in NaKh. He makes the following statement, which I shall proceed to disprove.
"Nowhere else in the Pentateuch outside of Deuteronomy does the term torah refer to an extended written legal document. This latter meaning seems to be unique to Deuteronomy itself.[4] Even as conservative a commentator as Malbim recognizes that the reference to “this torah” in Deut 1:5 is to the set of laws beginning in Deuteronomy chapter 12,[5] i.e. to the section of the book that modern scholars refer to as the Deuteronomic code, and not to the entire Torah, namely Genesis-Deuteronomy."
This is of course nothing new, it is part of the Higher Biblical Criticism.
However, his claim that "Nowhere else in the Pentateuch outside of Deuteronomy does the term torah refer to an extended written legal document" is false, and one only needs to look into the Pentateuch itself to demonstrate this.
In Exodus 24, we see as follows:
12 And the LORD said unto Moses: 'Come up to Me into the mount and be there; and I will give thee the tables of stone, and the Torah and the commandment, which I have written, that thou mayest teach them.'
וְאֶתְּנָה לְךָ אֶת-לֻחֹת הָאֶבֶן, וְהַתּוֹרָה וְהַמִּצְוָה, אֲשֶׁר כָּתַבְתִּי, לְהוֹרֹתָם.
At very minimum, this is the Torah referring to an extended written legal document.
In all likelihood it is way beyond the 2 Tablets of Law, and may be the Torah up till this point, or the legal aspects of the Pentateuch which are completed upon Moshe's sad death. The Torah is a book of Law, from which Moses will teach Israel.
As is clear in this verse and also previously in this chapter, everything is written, there is no oral section of the Torah or Mitzvah. Neither Orthodox rabbinic, nor Reform Bible criticism are truthful interpretations of the Torah.
